Re: SDD partitioning and allocations

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

Andy Smith wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 07:07:03AM -0400, songbird wrote:
...
>>   When trying to see what current recommendations are for setting
>> up SSDs I see no mentions of this at all?  Has this changed?
...
> Just don't worry about it unless you have an unusually heavy write load.

  it isn't much IMO.  i do certain things to keep my
system tidy.


...
> (Just do "smartcl -A /dev/blah" to see all the attributes without the
> JSON output I used just to make it presentable in this email.)

  things look ok with my existing SSDs.


...efi...
> The recommended size of an EFI SYstem Partition (ESP) is up for debate
> and is not related to what kind of drive you put it on:
>
>     https://wiki.debian.org/UEFI#EFI_System_Partition_.28ESP.29_recommended_size

  ah ok, tks.


>> The rest of the new drive will just be one large partition.
>
> RAID is worth it so as not to have to stop working to reinstall from
> backups.

  i have stable partition on different device so not
expecting any downtime if i really need to get back to
a reliable state.


>>   The 2nd new SSD will be for consolidating my backups (that are on
>> a smaller SSD at the moment plus also on an external drive that is
>> not used frequently - I don't trust it as it has been knocked off
>> the table but until it gives up entirely it is a backup that can't
>> be messed with as it is not mounted or powered on often).
>
> SSDs have no moving parts so withstand sudden impacts a lot better than
> HDDs do. It's probably fine.

  the external drive is the spinning rust kind so yes i am
a bit more worried about it, plus there's some kind of loose
rattling part inside (so i won't be shaking it any more if i
can help it).


>>   I don't use the discard options on the mounts or filesystems
>> and also don't run fstrim automatically, I will eventually set
>> this up to run monthly.
>
> fstrim runs by default on all Debian installs for years so you must have
> gone out of your way to disable this. Why?

  because i didn't want it to run.  i do not want automatic
much of anything so i turn them off when i can find them.
there's quite a long list now of stuff i hated when i found
out about it and turned it off and a few i'd like to turn
off but can't without uninstalling most of my system.  :(

  as i said i will probably eventually turn it back on for
a once a month run, but that should be plenty for my use
case.

  thanks,


  songbird